


Practical Applications

by yvesdot



Category: Original Work
Genre: Oneshot, Short Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-01-06 03:59:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18380516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yvesdot/pseuds/yvesdot
Summary: At Clairmouth, you are either a Tanner student or an Ocean student-- and you're very insistent about your choice, because the two of them can't seem to agree on anything. Timothy, who missed the memo, is in both classes. Chaos ensues.(Based on a prompt long since lost to the bowels of the internet.)





	1. LITERATURE CLASS

**(WITNESSED BY TIMOTHY)**

**(THOUGH NOT A SURPRISE TO ANYONE)**

"The problem with the signifier and the signified," Mr. Tanner said, pausing briefly to curve out the capital  _D_ on the chalkboard _,_ "is that their attachment is continually subjective." He drew a book on the chalkboard, wrote  _BOOK_ next to it in immaculate, fluid handwriting, and gestured to the one in his hands. "This word," he said, pointing to it, "is our signifier. We agree that it means what, Timothy?"

Timothy jumped. He had been taking notes.

"Well," he said, "...a book."

"Correct. But what do you  _think_ a book is?" Mr. Tanner asked, stepping forward to the wide, paper-covered desk. There was generally an apple or two there. Today there was just one, but Timothy had already seen four at a time.

"...something with words in it?"

Technically, Timothy was not a bad student. He was not even an average student. He was a very good student, when he was not in this particular situation. But it had taken a while to get used to Mr. Tanner, more specifically having both his and Ocean's class.

"That's fine," Mr. Tanner said now. Timothy attempted to reconnect his soul with his body. "As long as you have a concept. But that concept is separate from the word  _book,_ and furthermore, from what is actually on my desk _._ And then, of course we have our associations-- Alexander?"

"Yes, Mr. Tanner?" You could tell Alexander was a Tanner student. He had the glasses, the collared shirt, the six 'suggested reading' books on his desk beside the three required texts.

"When I say 'book', what qualities do you think of?"

"Intelligence. Literacy. Talent." Alexander searched for a moment. "Usefulness."

"Exactly. Now, I might agree with those, but I also might add my own. But we can all agree that  _this,"_ he said, tapping the cover of the book, "is not  _inherently_ any of those things. And this word--" he pointed to  _BOOK_ on the board-- "is not at all a natural synonym to them, either. We are working with our own projec-- is there something you  _want?"_ he asked, turning towards the door.

"Hello,  _Mr._ Tanner."

It was Ocean.

At Clairmouth, one was either a Tanner student or an Ocean student. The decision would be made shortly before the administration began sorting students into classes, and generally one's parents would send off an email something to the effect of 'please place my child into ___'s class', or occasionally, 'please do  _not_ place my child into ___'s class'. Some people were lucky enough to avoid Tanner or Ocean entirely, but for the most part, people had their allegiances. If you didn't want Ocean, you ended up in a different art class. If you didn't want Tanner, you ended up in a different literature class.

Timothy had not gotten the memo.

He had waited patiently for his classes, and, come fall, he had received the small blue sheet with the list of blocks and teachers, and neither  _MR. EMILIO TANNER_ nor  _OCEAN_ had seemed particularly interesting to him, beyond the fact that one of his teachers apparently had only one name. Somehow, someone had put him in both classes.

And now he was going to have to deal with it.

"Indoctrinating the youth?" Ocean asked, looking in. They got a series of diligent frowns from the actual Tanner students.

"If it will help them to become functioning adults, by all means," Mr. Tanner said, writing  _LITERARY CANON_ on the board. "Now--"

"A functioning adult," Ocean interrupted, "would be one who has a healthy balance of modern art  _and_ incredibly dusty encyclopedias in their lives. You can't spend all day poring over whatever-this-is--"

"One of the finest authors of our lifetimes--"

_"--whatever-this-is_ and then tell me you're being fulfilled. I mean, come on!" Ocean lifted the book, then put it back down. "Go outside! Climb a tree! Mess up your hair!"

"No," Mr. Tanner said.

"God, I hope these children have an awakening and switch classes," Ocean said. It was actually something that happened, but generally carried a great deal of shame from the class one betrayed. "Otherwise, they'll never-- Timothy?"

Timothy blinked.

"Yes, that's my student," Mr. Tanner said. "And speaking of things which are mine; this classroom. This class.  _Yours_ are down the hall. Leave my students alone."

"That's  _my_ student," Ocean protested. "He's in my class. Block seven; he's making a marvelous bust of his mother out of felt right now."

Mr. Tanner looked at Timothy. Timothy shrank.

"Timothy," Mr. Tanner said, "is a remarkable student who has an understanding of subtext most experienced critics would give their eyeteeth for."

"Timothy," Ocean responded, "is a visionary."

Mr. Tanner pointed towards the door.

"Out."

Ocean rolled their eyes, took the apple off Mr. Tanner's desk, and left. Stella, seated somewhere in the back of the class, gasped.

"Mr. Tanner, they took--"

"I know," Mr. Tanner said, putting his book down. He took a seat at his desk and crossed his arms. "Timothy, is this true?"

"Yes," Timothy said. He had to repeat himself twice to get to a normal volume.

"You are in both of our classes."

Timothy managed to get slightly more volume this time, but not by much.

Mr. Tanner sighed and stood, picking up his chalk again.

"I have one request," he said. "We ask for one thing, and they can't do it. I would highly suggest, Timothy, that you drop Ocean's class before they fill your head with their nonsense. To page seventy-five, everyone, and put down the camera, Catherine."


	2. LUNCH, AND THEN ART CLASS

**(WITNESSED BY TIMOTHY)**

**(AND MOST OF THE SCHOOL, LUNCHLY SPEAKING)**

Mr. Tanner and Ocean were, technically, not as different as they could have been. Both were very good teachers, according to their respective students, and both had degrees in teaching from the same college. Both were married, both preferred coffee to tea, both were apparently cat people... and yet, by lunchtime, the only thing that happened to be important was that they were, in fact, different, and Timothy had betrayed both of their classes by existing.

"Ocean wears their hair long," a Tanner student said, joining the mob at Timothy's lunch table. Everyone was standing, so they couldn't theoretically be  _sitting_ with him, but a good amount of the school had managed to get into attendance. "Like a hippie."

"I know," Timothy said, as mildly as possible.

"Tanner is brainwashing you," an Ocean student retorted, flipping their own long hair. "You're going to get into some joyless academic school and have no fun for the rest of your life."

"I politely disagree," Timothy managed.

"I hope when you drop out of school and start an art commune, your parents care about you enough to let you live in their basement."

"Thanks?"

The experience brought Timothy a little closer to hell. Fortunately, people lost interest (or ability to come up with insults) reasonably quickly, and eventually Timothy was left alone at the table with his list of similarities. Apparently it was not common knowledge that there were any, not with so few students interested in both of them. Not that that was really surprising-- if you liked Ocean's stance of giving everyone in the class As out of protest, you were very likely to be opposed to Mr. Tanners "you will  _earn_ your grades in my class" style of paragraph-length grammatical critiques. If you wanted to spend the semester analyzing a single stanza of a Shakespearean sonnet down to his choice to use the word "the", you were probably not going to be interested in covering the art room floor with ink in order to shoot photos of Ocean writing in it. And if you actually liked any of Ocean's loudly political tie-dyed shirts, you probably were not going to be a fan of Mr. Tanner's admittedly repetitive suit jackets.

Timothy trudged his way to art class post-lunch, and, as expected, found everyone sitting as physically far from him as possible. Two students had vacated the tables entirely and were struggling to erase their twin blind contour portraits of each other out of white charcoal on their laps.

"Ocean, is it true you were an actor in college?" Richelle was busy making a ball of newspaper shreds. On each one she wrote facts about people at the school, and apparently she was hoping to get something from everyone. Most of them would be covered by others, obviously, but the spirit of the thing was what counted.

"Maybe," Ocean said. Timothy, facing away from the conversation so as to pretend to not notice the daggers being stared into his back, fixed an ear on his (felted) mother. "But not in anything special. Well, all art is special, of course, but I mean nothing I would  _show_ anyone. I do recall one performance, where I was naked from the waist down and covered in gravy... it was a political piece, obviously."

Timothy could feel people nodding sagely.

"Do you miss it?"

"Well," Ocean said, "sometimes. But all of life is an act, you know." And at this point Timothy could hear them coming closer. He readied himself instinctively.

"So you're in Tanner's class," Ocean said, taking a seat on one of the uncomfortable barstool-shaped objects littering the classroom. "How did that happen?"

"I'm new," Timothy managed. "To the district."

"Aha." Ocean tapped their fingers on the table lightly. "You gave him an apple, didn't you?"

"Yes." He'd given Ocean gummy worms, as requested.

"Hm." Ocean clasped their hands together on the table. "I notice you're not trying eyelashes."

"I still think the felt is too thick for eyelashes," Timothy said. "The eyes--"

"So it's true." And now Mr. Tanner was the one leaning on the doorframe. Ocean frowned mildly in his direction. "You're also in Ocean's class."

"Yes, and we're mid-critique about his mother's eyelashes, so if you could please--" Ocean made a general hand-fluttering motion towards the door. Timothy noticed someone in the back of the classroom holding up a phone and did his best to inch silently out of frame.

"Mr. Tanner, do you have a statement on Timothy's mother's eyelashes for the school newspaper?" asked someone sitting in front of a set of Victorian houses made out of Jell-O.

"What-- what purpose does this have, in Timothy's everyday life?" Mr. Tanner asked, gesturing at Timothy's  _MOM,_ 2019, Felt (roughly 11" by 8" by 7".) "What use will this discourse on the eyelashes provide?"

"Creativity. Problem-solving.  _Hand-eye coordination,"_ Ocean said, throwing their hands in the air. "Certainly an exploration of his subconscious views on the familial structure wouldn't be a good enough explanation for you. Why do we do anything, Mr. Tanner? What use is there to anything?"

"Attractively nihilistic," Mr. Tanner said, "but unfortunately, not an answer. What--"

"Mr. Tanner, what do you think of my bust?" Timothy asked. Mr. Tanner looked at him. Timothy looked back at Mr. Tanner, and blinked. Mr. Tanner looked at the bust; and then at Ocean, sitting with their arms crossed and smirking up at him. A very loud shutter-click came from somewhere to Timothy's left.

"Well," Mr. Tanner said. He crossed his arms, and then uncrossed them to more thoroughly rub at his face.

Timothy waited, sweating.

"My," Mr. Tanner managed eventually, "it certainly is... felted." He sounded a bit like he might have been coming down with something.

Ocean snickered.

"I have an essay to grade," Mr. Tanner said, re-crossing his arms. "Several of them, in fact. If you will excuse me."

And he disappeared out the door.

"Wow," Ocean said. "Well, if I'd known  _that_ would work..."

"You probably still wouldn't have done it," Timothy said quietly. Ocean looked at him. "I mean, you go to bother him all the time, and we're not even really talking. It's not like he's actually interrupting the class." Timothy patted the top of his bust, and the purple material sank slightly. "Actually, you never come into  _his_ class on exam days, do you?"

Ocean stared at him.

"Also, literature  _is_ art." Timothy looked at his soft, fuzzy masterpiece and nodded. "I think I'll try the eyelashes."


	3. HOME

**(NOT WITNESSED BY TIMOTHY THIS TIME)**

**(THOUGH HE PROBABLY COULD HAVE PREDICTED IT)**

**(...IT'S A GOOD THING HE'S NOT ON THE NEWSPAPER COMMITTEE)**

Emilio Tanner tossed his car keys onto that horrific side table Ocean had bought at a fair, theoretically to 'support local businesses' but more likely because Emilio had taken one look at it and walked in the other direction, and at that point Ocean wouldn't shut up about how  _the legs are carved like little fishies don't you just love it!_  And in the end Emilio had cracked and opened his wallet and said fine, alright, the detailing on the carvings was indeed impressive.

As usual, he had driven home and Ocean had walked, but somehow the traffic and some kind of accident halfway there had aligned to make him arrive later, and so by the time he made it into the front hall Ocean was already cracking eggs into a frying pan.

"That was mean," Emilio said, and Ocean looked up from the stove. "You knew I couldn't say anything negative about a student's work."

"In your defense, it certainly  _was_ felted," Ocean said, smiling slightly. They shook some kind of seasoning mix into the frying pan.

"Eggs?" Emilio asked, hanging his bag up on a hook. He came over to look into the pan and kissed Ocean on the cheek. "Tell me that isn't cheese."

"Hey, if you don't like it, you can fix your own dunch," Ocean said, looking at the label on a spice jar. "I mean, linner."

"Have you considered that there might be a reason we don't have a word for that?" Emilio asked, collapsing into a chair. He smiled; "Perhaps I'm not skilled enough to make whatever-that-is because I lack the-- what did you say about the bust-- the hand-eye coordination?"

"Oh my God, what, you expect me to bust out one of your lectures about how culture is complicated and subjective?" Ocean rifled through the kitchen drawers for a new spatula. "Yes, it helps with hand-eye coordination! Just because you've never gone to your old family home, dug up the remains of your first hamster, and used the results to arrange a self-portrait doesn't mean that there's no value in it!"

"You made that one up," Emilio said, after a moment.

"Danny Stewart, last year. You said you were afraid to sneeze."

"I wasn't that rude."

"And then when it was all over you were like, 'Ocean, I have something very important to discuss with you', and I was like, 'I'm in the middle of this pot of coffee', and you were like, something something I don't remember at this point, and then we ended up making out in a closet or something."

"It was the faculty bathroom, and nobody would have minded. It boosts morale, or whatever it was. The staff loves us."

"You know some principals sponsor bake sales?" Ocean asked, turning down the knob on the stove.

Emilio watched them put spices away for a moment. He tapped his fingers on the table, then crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair.

"Timothy knows," he said.

"Oh, yeah, definitely," Ocean said, turning around. "And?"

"I--" Emilio threw his hands into the air. "Well, I thought we were doing very well with the lies and the subterfuge and whatnot, but alright, nevermind. Let's hope for the best; I have a memoir riding on this and it'll be funny if we fail."

Ocean rolled their eyes.

"It's fine, he's not going to tell anyone." Ocean tied their hair up in a small bun. "You want eggs or what?"

"You're taking this very--" Emilio looked at Ocean's expression. "Yes, eggs, thank you, I appreciate you every day, I knew since I first saw you half-naked and covered in gravy that we belonged together, but we're in the middle of a conversation..."

Ocean sliced the egg situation in half and divided it on to two plates, sliding one towards Emilio on the small kitchen table.

"You worry too much," they said, pulling a set of forks out of a drawer and sitting down across from him. "It'll be fine. I trust him. Maybe," they said, with a full mouth, "he can be recruited."

Emilio shook his head, slicing into his egg-something with a fork. He tried a piece (it was fine, if cheesy) and looked up.

The wall behind Ocean was chalkboard-painted, and bore a good deal of tally marks, divided roughly into two sides, and sometimes accompanied by small scribbles and words. Around Ocean's head, Emilio could just barely read the latest entry:  _MARCH 16TH: "MY, THAT CERTAINLY IS FELTED."_


End file.
